Photo via Jordan Uhl/Flickr (CC BY 2.0), @jaywillis/Twitter
September 1, 2021, 11:38 am
The silence of the Supreme Court allowing the unconstitutional sex-week abortion ban, which outlaws abortions before most mothers will ever know they’re pregnant, to take effect in Texas has resulted in a widespread uproar among pro-choice activists and their supporters. The fact that the law clearly violates Roe v. Wade, the ruling that has upheld the right to abortion for half a century, is bad enough, but the finer details of SB8 are a layer cake of horrors.
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This was laid out by legal writer Jay Willis in a Twitter thread that might make you consider certain medical procedures to prevent pregnancy forever.
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As abortion rights advocates were warning months ago, SB8 creates what is essentially a bounty on anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion, whether by assisting with the actual procedure, giving someone money to get one, giving someone a ride to the clinic, or anything else anti-choice vigilantes might imagine.
“Under SB8, any random person can sue anyone who ‘aids and abets’ abortion,” Willis writes. “This includes paying for abortion, and using insurance. So, if you give a friend money, or file an insurance claim, or are an insurance company who pays a claim, you might be a target.”
The reward for successfully suing someone for aiding an abortion is $10,000 every time, plus the person you sue has to cover your legal fees. If the accused successfully defends themselves, they get nothing but a big bill from their lawyer that the plaintiff does not have to cover.
It could not be more clear who this bill is meant to favor.
This is not even limited to people who actually perform actions that “aid and abet” an abortion, but includes anybody who intends to do so. Since anyone can be accused of intent to do anything, this could set the stage for a wave of frivolous lawsuits by people hungry for a free $10,000 or who simply wants to punish someone they don’t like with a pile of unnecessary legal fees at the very least.
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This can be done for every individual abortion that occurs, according to the text. With the number of virulently anti-choice people in the state of Texas compared to the paltry number of abortion providers left, it seems inevitable that performing safe and legal abortions within its borders will quickly become an impossible financial burden.
In yet another layer of awful, this liability for abortion doctors and anyone else who might be in any way involved in an abortion happening remains for four years and cannot be erased by a court ruling that the procedure was performed within the confines of this extremely restrictive law. To make things even more difficult for defendants in these suits, anti-choice accusers can file them in any part of the very large state they want, potentially forcing the defendants to travel many miles just to defend themselves from what might be entirely bunk accusations.
“One option for vigilante claimants is the county where they live, regardless of where the alleged conduct took place,” says Willis. “The law PROHIBITS transfers without the consent of all parties. If you live in El Paso and get sued in, like, Galveston, tough s–t.”
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A final baffling section of this bill outlined by Willis somehow states that even if a court rules SB8 unconstitutional, which would be inevitable if the spirit of Roe v. Wade was at all respected, that ruling can be tossed out the minute a “later court” says so. How a bill can dictate the judicial principles that could affect it is baffling legal experts across the nation.
“And just to be safe, the law specifies that any court ruling that any part of SB8 is unconstitutional is temporary and can be overruled as soon as a friendlier court comes along. Utterly deranged, but also, what the conservative legal movement has been working for for decades.”
As of this article’s publishing, the Supreme Court has still not responded to requests by the ACLU for an emergency stay on SB8 in spite of the outrage. Pro-choice experts worry that the ultimate result of this bill, considering the now heavily conservative makeup of the SCOTUS, will be the overturning of Roe v. Wade and a return to total abortion bans in many states across the country.
*First Published: September 1, 2021, 11:38 am
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